Posted
by
Zonk
on Wednesday November 07, 2007 @11:15AM
from the wait-wait-no-need-to-fly-off dept.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun comments on the big news from late last night: NCsoft has announced that it has purchased City of Heroes/Villains from Cryptic Studios, the Massive game's original developer. Everyone on the team has been offered a new position with the newly formed NCsoft NorCal studio, and many of them have accepted. As far as the players are concerned, NCsoft only intends for them to see freebies as a result of this deal: "Now back to you, the players. You are the lifeblood of our game. In celebration of our new studio and our exciting plans, and in order to thank you for the fantastic community that you have built, we are pleased to announce the following: All players with City of Heroes retail accounts will now have access to City of Villains, and all City of Villains retail accounts will now have access to City of Heroes. Players that didn't previously have access to "the other side" will find that they do now. Just log in to check it out! After the launch of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time this Fall, we are removing Debt from all characters and giving you a fresh start ... Also after the launch of Issue 11, all Supergroups will receive an additional 20,000 Prestige per Supergroup member."

Actually, it's even funnier. COH and COV are the same game. Whether you have "both" installed, or only one of them, you run the exact same executable, use the exact same resource files, and connect to the exact same servers, and your stuff is saved in the exact same database.The only difference between COH, COV or both, was your account. If the account says you only paid for COV, then their server will only let you play on the COV side. But, again, you already had both.

I have no experience with either, but allowing access to both cities is a great move. Forgiving debts, giving away points, etc not so much. Smart players will exploit this and just run up debts. Dumb players won't, either because of misplaced ethics or because they don't know how to read.

Maybe it's not the same, but in the games I play online, I hate to see this kind of virtual pandering.

Debt doesn't work like that in CoH. It's essentially negative experience points that accrue when a player is defeated - having it halves the rate of experience gain until it is paid off. It isn't like debt in the sense we usually think of it, where you get something in exchange for a future obligation; the player gets nothing for their debt in CoH.

It had better, since people do purposely accrue debt in order to pay it back and get the badges (in fact, said badges can lead to a special power in combination with others). If not, then it would actually be a penalty to those players, forcing them to take extra time to die a bunch of times again.

Oh, and there's a debt penalty cap, so there's a limit to how much benefit could be realized (per character) from this relief.

It has been a long time since I played COH so I might have the details wrong, but I remember that debt wasn't monetary, but rather experience realted. Death (getting teleported to the hospital) resulted in an experience point debt that could put you in the hole on your way to the next level. You could work it off directly, but it also encouraged you to go on lower level missions and sidekick/mentor newer players to work it off faster.So there isn't much abuse possible, it's more a "wipe the slate clean" dea

Debt was already capped, so you're not getting that much. Plus for everyone who was at level 50, debt had no effect whatsoever, so, you know, why bother?And running an xp debt on purpose is a bad idea anyway.

1. It means running up a lot of death, which means a lot of running back to your corpse instead of doing quests and killing NPCs. Plus, it's demoralizing for most people. It's associated with a failure, no matter how minor.

2. Until NCSoft forgives it, you'll get half xp, as the other half goes to paying

Yes, yes, I know nitpicking at the details is a national sport on Slashdot, but take a pause and think about it a bit. You get to run back to the mission, if you want to continue it, and to roughly where you were when you faceplanted. Because, you know, you have to continue from there. Same thing, whether there's a corpse on the ground or not.

Especially at low levels, it's often efficient to die, using the hospital teleport as a shortcut if it's at the direction where you were headed anyways. So certainly no need to return where you died always.

Until level 10 there is no debt at all, and below 20 or so, debt is a silly joke. Doubly so between levels 10 and 13, which is where people do it the most. (Because at 14, as you know, they get a travel power.) That's why people do that: because it doesn't matter at that level. The first couple of groups in a solo mission will clear that hospital teleport debt.So now look at the GGP post or so, claiming that people will abuse that debt forgiving. What's the worst that can happen there? That a couple of frus

the answer, at least villain-side, could be that one of the debt badges (2nd or 3rd - 1.2 million debt or something obscene) goes toward a +hp accolade. So if the debt forgiving went towards that badge on a high level toon, that would make a pretty big dent towards the badge (~300-500k debt maybe?). Not that it's terribly painful to work off anyways, but there ya go

Heh. The debt badges don't work that way. They don't count debt incurred, they count debt repaid. So if you were after that badge, heh, being fo

When I was more obsessive about not out-leveling story arcs and hidden contacts, I would regularly run a character into groups of tough mobs and politely wait for them to hand my ass to me. Fortunately, that particular stunt is going to become unnecessary when the Flashback system goes live.

I can see some people running up debt on their idle 50's, in order to get a sliver further into the various XP debt badges, but overall this seems to be nothing more than a nice (if kind of empty) gesture.

I'm definitely turning 'ignore Supergroup invites' on for my unaffiliated characters, though. Random pubbie invites were common enough before; the prospect of signing bonuses is going to whip them into a frenzy.

On the official forums, the moderators have stated that they're going to tell exactly when the debt eradication will happen, as in a time and date. They have explicitly said that one of the purposes of doing so is specifically so day/night/whatever before, people can do something they're not really used to being able to do because it's a PITA to work off the debt: go out and go nuts.

Want to take on the hardest über-mission that people normally don't work on because they know that they'll spend the n

I have no experience with either, but allowing access to both cities is a great move. Forgiving debts, giving away points, etc not so much. Smart players will exploit this and just run up debts. Dumb players won't, either because of misplaced ethics or because they don't know how to read.
Maybe it's not the same, but in the games I play online, I hate to see this kind of virtual pandering.

Taking a different tack here - the entire point of COH and COV is ethics - it's a superhero universe. You can have great, fantastic ethical issues that come up - for example Watchmen (spoilers) deals with a superhero who fakes an alien invasion of New York City, kills about a third of the state, but actually brings about world peace. The other main characters have to make a choice, to cover up and keep world peace, or to reveal the truth and have the people who died die for naught. While you don't get

Well, I might. Not that debt is a big deal anyway, but if I knew all my debt was going to be erased tommorow, I might have fun and mess around a little more (Yeah, I can fight that hundred foot giant robot ALL BY MYSELF. OWWWW, that left a mark).

There are badges in the game associated with debt, many people at level 50 "kill" themselves to earn and clear it as it doesn't affect you anymore. Still, i doubt the debt clearing in Issue 11 will count towards them.

In City of Heroes/Villains, you get badges for accomplishments. One accomplishment is running up debt. Some people let themselves be defeated so that they are in a continual state of xp debt, just so they can acquire all the badges.

It's strange behavior, but then it's an unusual game that caters to people who like thinking outside the kryptonite box.:)

Could you cite a source that states this accomplishment that you gain from "running up debt"? [Not that accomplishment(s) for paying off debt, mind you - one where you gain an accomplishment for getting into debt.]

Presumably, when the debt is erased systematically for all players, accomplishments aren't going to be handed out for "paying off debt" since the erasure is coming from the system.

As ominous Cow posted, I misspoke -- the accomplishments are for paying off debt.

The rest of my post was in response to someone (not a CoX player, I assume) asking why players would intentionally run up debt in the first place. I think I answered that well. I agree with you, the debt amnesty does not seem exploitable.

Bought my mac in January and dumped this game and moved to WoW. Theres a reason why WoW has a couple million players and these guys don't... it's because you can play Wow on ALL platforms due to them supporting openGL and not DirectX. More game developers should start learning that open game development especially now that VISTA has bombed is in their best interest; other OS sales numbers are not going down and we are just going to dump your game when we switch.

The reason everyone plays WOW and not COH/COV is critical mass. People play WOW because people play WOW. I stopped playing COV because no one else was playing and it was impossible to find anyone to group with.

I found tons to group with. Had a lvl 50 hero and lvl 50 villain. Don't know your problem. As for critical mass, by your logic everyone in the world should be Islamic since thats the most popular religion. Critical mass explains mob mentallity, not the reason why people purchase a product; thats called a monopoly... like iPods and Microsoft. And last that I heard of, WoW was NOT a monopoly.

Yeah, Christianity isn't a religion... it's a TYPE of religion or a religious GROUPING. Like saying Trucks are the most commonly driven vehicle and the second most common is the Honda Accord. Comparing a specific make and model to a grouping is incorrect logic.

Did you only play at 3:00am on a low-population server or something? Whenever I'm around, there are plenty of other people. Hell, half of the complaints on the official forums are people griping about all of the broadcast clutter and blind invites.

Co[HV] runs just peachy with BootCamp, even on the meagre GMA950 integrated video on the low-end machines. Once Parallels and/or VMWare get hardware 3D acceleration worked out, it'll be awesome.I'm hoping the move to NCSoft will add some QA/testing muscle to the development team. The Co[HV] client has always been a bit iffy on ATI video cards (pretty sure that's a potential market of more than 20 million) and it really doesn't run well on Vista (another large potential market).

If you consider actual sales, it is bombing.I'm talking people purposefully buying it, not getting it with a new computer whether they like it or not, or getting a free copy from their school or any of a myriad number of ways that MS has artificially inflated the sales figures on Vista.I can not back this up with numbers, as number are very hard to get on this subject; the only things available are fuzzy percentages.

I pretty much value my statements.I'm curious, which version did you buy? was there any primary underlying reason? I have heard a couple of reasons I can't argue with, like better integrated tablet PC support and a requirement for robust DRM (long story).

Home Premium.
And it was all based on one single article that I read a while ago, detailing the architecture plans/updates to Vista. I've lost the link however so I can't give many more details.
I had also used some Beta/RC versions and I'd grown towards the OS enough that I chose it over Linux.
It might help that I'm not an average user, but a developer and I play no games on the PC. So performance issues are less important to me.

I know several people here at work in Bellevue WA (right across from Redmond) who weren't happy with VISTA and I told them they could request XP installed from their OEM, they instantly brightened up and started asking how. LOL.

I had to send links to articles to about 5 different people talking about how they could return their Dells and get XP installed and they said they were planning on doing it that weekend.

Another guy I knew had the 90% bandwidth throttling problem and couldn't figure out what wa

Yeah, I just switched to running a new iMac (having been a PC/Windows user since my 286 back in 1989 or so), and I am sure not looking back. However, while I wish that more games supported the Mac natively (and I expect they will as the platform has some real growth now it seems), it doesn't mean you can't play the old games. Bootcamp and a copy of WinXP SP2 ensure that when I want a gaming fix, I can get it pretty easily, then its back to the MacOSX side for serious computer use.MacOSX is such a superior c

I stopped playing CoH for the same reason. I got tired of keeping a second "gaming" Windows PC up to date with reasonable parts and software, and just starting using my home Mac full-time. Any game popular enough to matter gets ported anyway these days. That CoH isn't ported says more about CoH than it does about the Mac, IMHO.

Actually, it says more about the fact that there aren't enough Macs to make it worthwhile for [most] MMOGs to maintain two separate versions of their software...and Boot Camp gives them further disincentive.

Twenty million recent macs in use leaves plenty of market for a playerbase larger than nearly any game ever sees.

Boot Camp, however, changes pretty much nothing. Most people who choose macs are very much choosing to not use Windows. Giving them a new way to run the exact OS they don't want to run does not appeal to very many of them.

How many of your "twenty million" are interested in City of Heroes/Villains? How many would buy the game and then maintain a subscription? How much would it cost to develop and maintain the OSX client? What would be even more interesting: How many of your "twenty million" are Mac Minis with minimal gaming capability, and how many are truly new Mac users as opposed to Mac users who buy every upgrade?

I simply don't believe that large publishers (and NCSoft has become a large publisher) ignore the Mac use

How many of your "twenty million" are interested in City of Heroes/Villains? How many would buy the game and then maintain a subscription? How much would it cost to develop and maintain the OSX client? What would be even more interesting: How many of your "twenty million" are Mac Minis with minimal gaming capability, and how many are truly new Mac users as opposed to Mac users who buy every upgrade?

Perhaps a slightly lower percentage of those mac users are interested in games as a whole, but there are

I should mention here that I am not at all against the idea of creating OSX-compatible versions of PC games. I'd be particularly happy if this became the norm with MMOGs since when I play one, I'd like there to be as many players in my community as possible. I believe, though, that there are good reasons to eschew OSX in the gaming area, not the least of which is Apple's lack of encouragement. Microsoft has DirectX which has clearly won over the game development community. If Apple would create and supp

Actually, it says more about the fact that there aren't enough Macs to make it worthwhile for [most] MMOGs to maintain two separate versions of their software...and Boot Camp gives them further disincentive.

There are plenty of Macs to make the market profitable for game developers, if the game is a success to start with. There are really several types of games:

Games that the developers know are going to be successful and which plan for the Mac port immediately (think WoW) - these are usually released on both platforms simultaneously or with a slight delay for the Mac version.

Games where the developer is owned by MS and develops exclusively with DirectX - some of these get ported after some delay when MS g

City of Heroes is built on OpenGL also, go figure. However, the graphics aren't the only thing to a game client does, and the non-graphics part of City of Heroes is built for Windows only. This wasn't a malicious decision, it was a practical one. NCsoft isn't as big as Blizzard, it never has been. Hopefully, as demand for the game grows, they'll be able to g

Dude, I've run CoH on Linux using Cedega. There are no "glitches," it runs perfectly well. Like I said, it's officially supported by Cedega, just like World of Warcraft. The only thing that I would consider a glitch is that some of the higher-end graphics rendering functions, such as depth-of-field effects and such, don't work because the video driver that Cedega reports to the app claims to not have those capabilities (even if the card does).

I agree. I don't want to discourage people from playing it on Linux with Cedega. It ran GREAT and the glitches I experienced were only due to occasional upgrades and didn't affect gameplay; they were EXTREMELY minor.

This is why I'm not terribly concerned about NCSoft buying CoX outright. With almost the same dev team there, it's probably going to stick with the same general vision that it's been operating under so far, and NCSoft hopefully won't be inclined to mess around with it too much. If only one of them were sticking around (even if it was Prime Mover Positron), I'd be much more worried about the future of a game I've been playing on and off since launch.

I've got to say that I'm kind of worried. One of the best things about CoH is that the developers seem to focus a lot on what the players want. There have been several instances of major changes being brought to the game simply on player request, and it's greatly appreciated. I'll be kind of upset if NCSoft abandons this policy in favor of their plan to "aggressively develop and expand the franchise."

I think you're worried for nothing. NCSoft makes GuildWars under the ArenaNet name and they definitely DO listen to the players and the internet in general. The game is filled with references to popular internet sites and phenomena and each new version has things that people have been asking for. I don't see why they'd nix this policy when they make sure liberal use of it themselves.

That's not even mentioning that the majority of the dev team will remain the same, and it's only an ownership change.

ArenaNet is an independent studio, like Cryptic was. NCSoft doesn't have much direct influence on anything as far as maintenance and game updates go.

However, since NCSoft is hiring as many of the Cryptic guys as possible, it's plausible that they'll still have the freedom to take customer feedback and maintain the game. It's less likely, though, since they'll be more directly influenced by publisher upper management now.

The 'Crisis of Infinite Nerfs' was years ago. I was upset too -- quit the game for two years. Came back this summer after I heard that 1.) The nerfs were mitigated with the new invention system (which apparently was always the plan, they just didn't think to release the two at the same time), and 2.) Statesman was no longer with the game.That's right -- Statesman no longer worked with City of Heroes/Villains, and he was no longer driving the game toward the Lineage PvP template that he admired so much.

Eh, you've got a good point. It's *not* the same game as it was. Heroes can be made almost as powerful as they used to be, but it takes more effort and some loot. But it's not the same.I don't play my old characters anymore, because of how they were affected by the nerfs. I made new characters, who feel very powerful under the new rules. I think they've made a lot of progress and improvements on the game, but you're right that for some people, some actions in the past will never be forgotten nor forgiv

Well, they did introduce new content -- City of Villains. The fact that people who enjoyed playing Heroes might not want to play villains was apparently lost on Mr. Emmert. It is not lost on the new management, who has been creating nothing but hero content ever since (Faultline, the Hive, and the RWZ have all been revamped to high praise.)

It's been a while since I played and I can't really be bothered to go into the nitty gritty, but essentially, they changed the way that enhancements affect a character's powers.

Unlike WoW, the only real 'drops' in CoX are enhancements - tokens that you can drop into the six slots that can be created (one at a time, at level-up time) in every power in order to improve its effectiveness. Enhancements do things like boost attack damage and accuracy, increase the rate at which powers recharge, reduce the am

You're forgetting something about perma-Hasten. (And before I get started: this is coming from someone who never used it, just to be different from the cookie-cutter builds.)Perma-hasten wasn't an exploit. It was the officially allowed possibility, with Cryptic's blessing.

As the game was launched, you could make Hasten permanent with IIRC 2 SOs. Or maybe 3? I can't really remember. At any rate, you could not only make it "perma", you could have it stack with itself most the time.

Unlike WoW, the only real 'drops' in CoX are enhancements - tokens that you can drop into the six slots that can be created (one at a time, at level-up time) in every power in order to improve its effectiveness.

There's other drops you can get. Inspirations, for one. Essentially temporary enhancements that do stuff like boost your accuracy or damage output, or increase your defense, or allow you to rez on the spot after being defeated. There's also base salvage items that are needed for upgrading super

1. Google for the so called "ED" or "Enhancement Diversification".In a nutshell, the game already been nerfed twice in a row, especially the tanks and a smaller nerf to regen. (Regens had been nerfed in each patch since I1, so we were already used to that.)

And by "nerf" I don't mean the small tweaks you see on WoW. CoH under Statesman had never discovered fine tweaks. The COH kind of balance tweaks were the kind where one class went from God Mode to nobody, and another class was buffed into being God Mode.

I may have missed something big, but as an active member since I4, I only recall ED being an improvement to the game for most people, and seem to recall far less people leaving the game than cam back from canceled subscriptions because the game had been so ridiculously unbalanced before, and ED being the biggest and most effective balancer they've implemented into the game. I realize that subsequent tweaks and changes to the game were needed to fully balance out effects, (such as the I7 defense/damage resis

I see a few attempts at explaining were tried, but without giving you a full understanding.The giant nerf spoken of was called Enhancement Diversification. While it's common to state that this was a hard cap of 3 enhancements per power, it's far more subtle than that. What they did was add in a bell curve of diminishing returns for enhancements, with it starting to be noticeable around 75%. So, say you slot in 2 33% enhancements, you get the full 66%. Slot in a third, you get 93%. But, slot in 3 25% en

I mean, was it just that NCSoft offered unrefuseably large piles of cash?I met & interviewed Jack Emmert at E3 the year before CoH released - if there's anyone who was developing a game as a labor of love, it was him. He was almost a caricature of the Simpsons' comic book guy, but it was in a charming way because he was so genuine. I agree with his characterization of comic books as 'modern day mythology' and while I can't quite yet personally consider them quite 'literature', there are some fantastic

Jack Emmert, and the rest of Cryptic, has been working on Marvel Universe Online for awhile now. Cryptic found themselves in a situation many developers would kill to be in -- they owned too many game franchises that competed with each other.From this deal, Cryptic gets cash and the ability to do MUO with no conflict of interest. Win-win.

NCSoft gets a very loyal playerbase, a larger share of the CoX revenue stream, and a critically acclaimed game franchise. Win-win.

I really hope this helps expand the audience for this game in some manner. It deserves more exposure in my opinion. I have always thought of this as one of the best designed games I have ever seen. Cryptic just seemed to do everything right for the most part. The game has always represented top quality design and development for me.Sure, its a niche market, its not for everyone, and its got a narrow focus. I admit its limits. But in my opinion no other MMORPG out there (past or present) can hold a candle to

My "supergroup" and I left CoH a long time ago. Why?Because we no longer felt heroic. We had run every taskforce (Including the first from that portal realm - 11 HOUR MARATHON), done everything - we knew the game, constantly created new characters... AND we were still having a blast!

The characters we had planned out... from level 1 to 50 were all suddenly useless. All the planning and effort to tweak builds, respec builds and come out with something of 'heroic' proportions were deemed 'too powerful' and

Bzzt, wrong. Look at some of the early comics, and super-heroes were just that: unassailable gods with perfect morals.

Superman, for example, started with no vulnerability whatsoever. The whole "kryptonite" thing was invented as a tongue-in-cheek explanation when they had to skip an episode or two for the radio version later, for example because the actor was on vacation. And even there it wasn't actually used _in_ any story line. Superman didn't have to battle anyone wielding kryptonite at that point.

Mind you, if you're going to say that that's not (necessarily) much fun in a game, we can even aggree quickly.

But that's a limitation of video games, not a limitation of super-heroes. Literary or comic book characters can be as god-like as the author wants, and still be fun and popular.

Heck, you don't even have to look only at superhero comics. Take Terry Prattchett's Diskworld books, for example. Cohen the barbarian is, for example, so good at dodging that in Interesting Times he even dodges a cannonball from a gun that got teleported right in front of him and fired. Rincewind is comically incompetent except he always ends up on top, even if by sheer luck and without fully realizing what he's done. The witches are just short of god-like in their own right, and can pretty much get what they want even from Death himself. Wossname the monk learned from yetis how to "save and reload" IRL, so he just comes back after being beheaded. Etc, etc, etc. Almost every single major character in those books has some kind of super-power that makes him completely invincible and unstoppable, even by the whole freakin' army of China (or the DW equivalent of it.)

Does that make the books any less fun to read? Nope.

Think action movies. Rambo can stand tall with a machinegun in front of a whole tank division, or get in a pissing... err... shooting contest with a gunship and come out on top. Jedi in SW movies are just about gods that can only kill each other. But they're way out of the league of mortal soldiers or drones, even when those are in brigade-sized formations and with AT-AT and air support. Etc.

And you know what? I dare say that that's actually good character design. People want to be told a nice story where the hero overcomes everything, and everything ends with a happy ending.

Not many people want to be told a tale where the hero thought he could fly circles around the Death Star, but the laws of firepower always beat the rules of literature. Or not many want to be told the story of the guy who thought he could jump in front of the enemy company with a pistol, and was riddled with bullets before he even finished the clip. Those are depressing stories of failure. They're not fun.

We want to be told stories where one determined guy changes the world for the better, and nothing whatsoever can stay in his way. Not one where he fails in the first 15 minutes.

But, again, I can see how that doesn't translate into a fun video game. We just have to accept that it's simply different media, with different rules.

Bzzt, wrong. Look at some of the early comics, and super-heroes were just that: unassailable gods with perfect morals.

Did you ever wonder why that only happened in early comics? Has the possibility crossed your mind that the reason modern comics feature almost exclusively complex, flawed heroes is that comics about flawed heroes are more popular than comics about unassailable gods with perfect morals?

But that's a limitation of video games, not a limitation of super-heroes. Literary or comic book characters

Did you ever wonder why that only happened in early comics? Has the possibility crossed your mind that the reason modern comics feature almost exclusively complex, flawed heroes is that comics about flawed heroes are more popular than comics about unassailable gods with perfect morals?

And did you ever wonder why those modern comics with weak and morally ambiguous heroes only sell a tiny fraction of what comics used to sell? Why now it's regarded as a weird geek hobby, when it used to be entertainment for th

Pity you've missed the best parts of the game. I find ED expanded the definition of a Hero, not diminished it. What is heroic to you, sitting there for hours nose to nose with the Kronos Titan without it making a scratch, or hammering it while coming within an inch of your life yet coming out on top!

I am Blaster, as I go through the valley of debt I shall know no fear!

ED was the best thing that could happen to Electric Blasters. Back in the days before I4, we had all six-slotted for damage because we were the weakest Blaster powerset. ED grabbed us by the lapels and screamed "You're supposed to be Sappers! Slot some Endurance Drains!"Now my Elec/Elec eats bosses for lunch, solo. Pop an anti-mez inspiration (if necessary), run in, Short Circuit, Power Sink. I'm at full endurance, the boss is sucked dry, and with Endurance Mods on all my attacks, that boss won't come back

I was extremely happy when the system was changed (commonly referred to as "Enhancement Diversification" among the players). Before that happened, the Tank archetypes were invincible. It was common practice to create what were known as "burn" tankers, which were tanks that could absorb an infinite amount of damage without consequence and that would deal out massive amounts of damage with their auras. Other variations on powersets provided similar characteristics.

Good gameplay requires that the player be presented with interesting choices. If a tank character can kill a hundred mobs at a time with no risk by just doing the same routine over and over, then that's not interesting. I can understand why the developers would want to fix that.
What I can't understand is why professional game designers would create such a system in the first place. Since they create the rules, it's hard to fathom how they would be unable to see how their game system would work out once pl

You're right, that was my main problem. The developers harped on the concept of risk versus reward for a long time, and a small element of the player base (such as the poster I replied to) hated it. They only want the reward, not the risk.

As the poster himself pointed out:

the system was changed to what we were told was "How the devs originally wanted it"

The developers weren't clueless, they knew from the outset that it was an issue. However, I understand that they wanted to get the game out even if

> You're right, that was my main problem. The developers harped on the concept of risk versus reward for a long time, and a small element of the player base (such as the poster I replied to) hated it. They only want the reward, not the risk.

I actually wanted 'epic risk'... and a matching reward. But the rewards were all canned / weren't interesting for the most part. The difficulty slider helped with that some, but majority of the game was 'zone into boring warehouse, kill all, repeat'. So now I have bo

As to the 11 hour fest, we had many drops - so by the time we reached the end there weren't many of us left (4 i think?) which generally made everything take much much longer than it should have... IE careful pulling, super careful for aggro... and at the end of it at the 9 hour mark, it was bugged and we had to call for GM assistance to unbug it... we waited for 2 hours in the last map dancing and killing time.As to 'just fire tanks', not so. Any class that took the time to spec out dodge/tough/weave (p

I had two accounts and.. 5 or 6 lvl50's. And a smattering of other characters I didn't really care to break 40 with. Is it worth it for me to login for old-times sake? I haven't been back since ED. I guess the only thing I'd want to come back for would be content for my 50s.I wonder if my Fire/Mace tank is still viable... I named her "Pepper Spray".:-)

I guess I never felt stupidly broken, because we always challenged ourselves with what the game had to offer. (Pulling way too much, fighting things likely

I played City of Heroes for a couple of years, from a few months after initial launch up until shortly after the launch of City of Villains. I experimented with a few alternate characters but I had reached level 45 with my main; 5 levels below the level 50 cap.

I got into the game on the recommendation of my brother and another friend of ours. I played Everquest years earlier for a few months, shortly after the first expansion. The demanding nature of that game, including the reliance on grouping burned me out quickly. What attracted me to CoH was the ability to solo and lack of reliance on gear. It was kind of like a socialist MMO.

What really hooked me was the pace of combat. The game gets really exciting during a fight; I don't think there's been another MMO yet that matches the pace of that game. It's as close to direct, active control as I've seen thus far. Apparently a new powerset is being introduced which even allows for combos.

Additionally, a lone hero could face a group of upwards of 5 foes and emerge victorious, depending on the class. It was fun to jump into the midst of some villains and beat the hell out of them all. So in that regard, it was a very satisfying game.

The pace of leveling was fairly quick but, like all other MMOs it still had considerable grind. And that's really where things broke down. There was nothing else to do but fight. Every single thing in the game revolve around beating up badguys. There were conditions for some missions, like clicking on glowing items, but even then it required getting past hordes of villains. Story was presented in dialog boxes; at the time there were no cutscenes. Alternative skills, comparable to blacksmithing in fantasy MMOs were finally introduced a few months ago. This was after years of promising they were coming soon.

Apparently the skill system was completely redesigned at least 3 times over because it was deemed to not be fun enough. I haven't played what was finally implemented but from what I've read I'm not impressed. It looks like it's merely an adaptation of the supergroup base item building feature.

The character customization is excellent, and probably still surpasses what's available in most other MMOs. Beyond that, however, there's only one way to improve a character. And that's through enhancements which is comparable to stats for other games. Basically, enemies "drop" these enhancements which are then applied to a character's powers. So a player can boost damage, or the power's secondary debuff effect. That was all well and good until the developers decided they didn't want people focusing on a single aspect of any given power. So, every power has 5 slots, if I remember correctly, but using more than two slots for the same boost was essentially a waste. This was supposed to encourage enhancement diversity but I think it resulted in standard ideal templates for specific powers.

There was also the incessant complaining by those who had chosen classes that were less effective solo who felt it was unfair that other classes could solo so effective. Nevermind the fact that the best solo builds weren't always well-suited for groups. So a lot of work went into addressing that with mixed results and to, I feel, the general detriment of the game.

Another problem I came to find with the game was the excessive reliance on templates for environmental design. Basically, upon entering a zone the first time a player had a good sense for how the rest of the zone looked. And many of those features were reused in most other zones. So where other MMOs have a varied and dynamic landscape City of Hero's was a bit contrived. It was tiring running through the same laboratory with a random, nonsensical layout for the 5th time in a few hours. Despite that, the art style was great. It was a lot of fun traveling amongst those skyscrapers. The game simply could have benefited from more variety.

One thing that was good about CoH/CoV was how Cryptic has maintained a close relationship with the players. They've n

"What really hooked me was the pace of combat. The game gets really exciting during a fight; I don't think there's been another MMO yet that matches the pace of that game. It's as close to direct, active control as I've seen thus far. Apparently a new powerset is being introduced which even allows for combos."

If you like an active style of gameplay, I strongly suggest you check out Dungeons and Dragons Online. It plays much more like an action game than an MMO, including the player having to hit a target

So glad I don't play this anymore. A part of me was pissed that I bought both versions, now they are just giving the other side away for free. I'd play again if they gave everyone a free month if they already owned COV and COH.

I've been with City of Heroes since open beta 3.5 years ago (just missed the closed beta). I've seen several posts here on/. saying basically "Been to CoH, didn't like it, left the game" and I'd like to say a little about how the game has matured since then.Today's CoX (so abbreviated since both City of Heroes and City of Villains is really the same game) has changed massively during those 3.5 years. There's City of Villains, 2 years old as of last week, which nearly doubled the number of playable archetyp

As opposed to go into dungeon, kill 100 rats, level, go into another dungeon, kill 100 larger rats and level... all so you can get to level 1000 in order to go into the Dungeon Of Fat Loot with 50 other people to kill the Uber Rat Of Doom?

Sidekicking/exemplaring is undoubtedly the best feature of CoX. I played World of Warcraft this past summer, and thanks to my addictive personality I was constantly outleveling my friends and having to start new characters if I wanted to play with them. Every time I did, I wished that I could just say "exemplar me" and play with them using my favorite character. Ironically, in CoX it's actually a lot more fun creating additional characters thanks to the customization available in terms of powers and appe